Panic in the Streets

Until the events of the last 12+ months (and still running), this would be considered more as a straight detective narrative than anything remotely horrifying or even mildly depressing. Now, it’s directly horrifying and majorly depressing.

Just in this past year people who would previously never know or care to find out themselves about how viruses as deadly as these disrupt everything now have a plethora of information outlining the brutal efficiency in which COVID-19 can completely dismantle systems. Sigh, what did we learn from that?

Jack Palance on the run from a murder that unfortunately spurred the outbreak. How’s it feel to be the epicenter, Jack? HOW’S IT FEEL?!

But now knowing how a virus as deadly as the plague (or even less deadly than the plague, but still deadly) can affect towns, cities, ports and the economy (to name a few!), this could easily have gotten worse at any point.

Donning a macho image as a response to a perceived accusation of spreading a virus or complacency to murder is one thing that hasn’t changed about the US’s (USA’s? US’?) attitude regarding the entire handling of COVID-19. The people Lt. Clint Reed questioned each made a move to save their own skins thinking they were in legal trouble. By denying anything and everything having to do with the way the questions were pointing, they either ran right into the very trouble Reed was warning about either by contracting the virus or realizing someone they knew contracted it and died a day later.

This military official practices with a syringe, hopefully not wasting any of that sweet, sweet vaccine.

Suppose the real horror here is how easily the New Orleans Police Department pushed against the orders of the Public Health Service to contain an outbreak of the plague, insisting that their regular detective work was more important than a virus. Some of the police interactions behind the scenes here feel like a predecessor to The Wire, directly examining the regularly expected negligence mixed with a participatory incompetence of law enforcement when faced with something they can’t control.

There’s an element of pulling rank in the expectation that it will get you something faster or to get someone to believe you or pay attention, but of course it only serves to highlight how much of a dick you are.

So if you want to experience this whole rigamarole all over again, this time in noir, PANIC IN THE STREETS is a still-relevant grisly mirror in which the US government desperately needs to look into and understand.

[this article was originally published on june 2, 2021 on celluloidconsomme.medium.com.]